Wednesday, November 26, 2014

I've done this before and may have to have another go. Lots of fun. I love waiting for a package to arrive! Thanks to Chris, an engineer at Parallax, and the host of Savage Circuits for the video and the great idea!

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

"To Catch A Comet," a compelling documentary that details the complexities and challenges of the ten-year, four-million-mile journey of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Spacecraft Rosetta as it chased down and landed on the Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in a history-making feat this week, premieres Wednesday, November 19, 2014 on PBS.You can also stream the entire program on the PBS website.

This is an amazing achievement and demonstrates the endless possibilities in the field of robotics! See the full story here.

One other interesting bit of info - The lander is named after Philae Island in the Nile where an
obelisk was found and used, along with the Rosetta Stone, to decipher Egyptian
hieroglyphics.

Information on the video - Rosetta’s deployment of Philae to land on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The animation begins with Philae still on Rosetta, which will come to within about 22.5 km of the centre of the nucleus to release the lander on 12 November 2014.

The animation then shows Philae being ejected by Rosetta and deploying its own three legs, and follows the lander’s descent until it reaches the target site on the comet about seven hours later. The animation is speeded up, but the comet rotation is true: in the time it takes for Philae to descend, the nucleus has rotated by more than 180º (the comet’s rotation period is 12.4 hours).

The final steps of Philae’s descent towards the comet are shown as seen by a hypothetical observer close to the landing site on the comet.

Acknowledgement: The background image of the sequence showing Philae closing in on the landing site was taken by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera (ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA) on 14 September 2014 from a distance of about 30 km.